The Birmingham City Council on Tuesday approved incentives of another $6 million plan to spur development in the long-empty space where Ensley’s Ramsay-McCormack Building once stood.

Though only one council member, Hunter Williams, voted against the measure, no one on the council seemed pleased to provide the money for the project. The council in 2019 approved a $4 million package for developers who plan to build a five-story, 30,000-square-foot commercial property at the site.

“This project has been fraught with issues … . It’s been like a nightmare that keeps coming back,” Councilor Valerie Abbott said Tuesday.

Abbott said estimates for the project are about $19 million, and she would like some assurances that the city won’t end up funding the entire project.

The city attorney advised the council to enter an executive session due to pending litigation over the project.

Once they returned, the council approved the plan with only a brief comment from Councilor Carol Clarke before the vote: “It would be great to get this project behind us,” Clarke said, “We’re very much backed into a corner. It is what it is at this point.”

The agreement approved Tuesday will give Ensley District Developers an initial cash payment of $2 million. The rest of the package will come as a $3 million loan that will be forgiven if the project is completed as well as a $1 million loan to be repaid over 10 years.

Built in 1929, the 10-story Ramsay-McCormack tower had been empty since 1986. In 2009, attorney Antonio Spurling sued the city, seeking for the building to either be demolished or restored. Though he dropped the suit after the city pledged $900,000 toward restoration efforts, he sued again in 2012, claiming that those efforts had never materialized.

Former Mayor William Bell in 2016 announced plans for a $40 million renovation, after which the building would have served as headquarters for Birmingham’s municipal court, police department and fire department. That same year, a judge ordered the city to destroy the building by April 28, 2017.

After Randall Woodfin came into office, he nixed Bell’s plans for the site, and the city put out a request for proposals from developers. In 2019, officials approved the current redevelopment project with Ensley District Developers, and in 2023 the city extended the time limit on that project.

The city demolished the building in 2020. According to reports from WVTM 13, Spurling in 2023 filed motions in court seeking fines on the city for delays in the project, which was initially slated for completion in August 2021.

Air Refueling Wing Contract

In other business, the council approved an interlocal agreement with the 117th Air Refueling Wing, Alabama Air National Guard, for purposes of crisis management, working in conjunction with the Birmingham Police Department to provide protection from natural or man-made disasters.

Located at the northern end of the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, the 209-acre Air National Guard base employs 1,100 people and is responsible for roughly $109 million in annual economic impact throughout Birmingham and the surrounding area. It is one of only 19 air refueling bases in the United States.

When a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina happens, hundreds of evacuees are flown into the base and shuttled off to area hospitals.

“Many people don’t realize this, but the Air National Guard base is an important strategic location for disaster responses,” said Council President Darrell O’Quinn. “Any time you see some sort of natural disaster that happens within 800 miles, there are individuals that are deployed from this base to respond to that. This partnership today is about utilizing that resource and strengthening that relationship in order to better augment the services we have here to respond to situations like that.”